Shops Open in Fairfax’s New “Urban District” at Mosaic

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One stroll through Mosaic District and you’ll think you’ve landed somewhere between Capitol Hill and Bethesda.

DC’s favorite shops and restaurants are flocking to Mosaic District, a $150 million Edens development with retail anchors such as Matchbox Restaurant, Black’s, Cava, MOM’s Organic Market, Nieman Marcus Last Call Studio, Dawn Price Baby, Anthropologie, South Moon Under, Angelika Film Center and much, much more. Target, the largest retailer at Mosaic District, will open its doors this Sunday, October 14^th.  A full list of retailers, opening dates and events is available at the Mosaic District website.


Also onsite are new townhomes by DC’s leading urban developer, EYA. The townhomes at Mosaic District feature three and four bedroom floorplans, contemporary architecture, garage parking, plus the company’s signature rooftop terraces. New homes start from the mid $600s and include luxury finishes such as hardwood flooring, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. The townhomes are now 50% sold out and a limited number remain for Spring 2013 move-in.


In addition to the 40 shops and restaurants onsite, Mosaic District offers a shuttle to Dunn-Loring Metro station for easy access to the Orange line and downtown DC. It is perfectly situated where I-66, Route 50 and the Capital Beltway meet and Tyson’s Corner is a quick ten minute drive. Mosaic District is EYA’s 17th new home community in northern Virginia and a destination designed by leading retail shopping center developer Edens.

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Bethesda Industrial Site to Be Remade as Residential Complex

A moribund, paved-over industrial site just off of Little Falls Parkway in Bethesda is slated to be replaced with a 30-townhome housing development.

The 1.8 acre property at 5400 Butler Road is bracketed by Little Falls Parkway and Butler Road, between River Road and Massachusetts Avenue, and surrounded on three sides by parkland.  Presently the site of the BETCO complex of buildings and surface parking lots, plans call for the site to be razed, the pavement removed, and replaced with a Lessard Group-designed "scale-appropriate residential community" of 30 single-family garage-centered homes.

"We actually just got our planning board approval last week for the site plan and preliminary plan," said Stephanie Marcus of lead developer EYA Development.  "We hope to start construction at very end of this year or early in 2013."

Five of the townhouses (16.67%) will be moderately-priced units, and just under forty percent of the new site will be green space, up from basically zero percent at the current site.  Plans also call for about 2 parking spaces per market rate unit and one per MPDU, totaling approximately 64 spaces.

The developers have made several optional concessions, including
removing the existing pavement at their own cost, throwing in an extra MPDU (they're only required to include four), installing stormwater management at their own cost, and setting the amount of green space at 38%, 8% above the requirement.  The project will also remedy the BETCO plant debris' encroachment onto nearby parkland.

The plan itself is somewhat unremarkable - let's face it, a development of townhomes excites pretty much no one - but it's essentially making something from nothing, and in the big picture the removal of the pavement, remediation of parkland encroachment, and significant addition of greenspace, more than makes up for what may be lacking aesthetically.


Bethesda, Maryland real estate development news

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EYA Announces Construction Start for Brookland Metro Project

After last week's announcement of Bozzuto-Pritzker Venture's new alliance with Abdo in developing the $200 million project on Catholic's South Campus, every propogator of real estate news (including DCMud), was happy just to have something printable during a lazy August. But the cash infusion into the neighborhood was good for other developers too; namely EYA, which rebroadcast the news in advance of its own groundbreaking around the corner. The area's current access, or lack thereof, to quality, independent eateries and retail is regrettable, and any chance of more commerce, whatever the time-frame, is good news. Now piggybacking on these housing-market huzzahs, EYA has given the area's residents and real estate news junkies more to cheer about, announcing that their expansive LEED-certified residential development will break ground on Tuesday. As proof of the regional renaissance, EYA also notes "the massive 40+ acre Dakota Crossing development and the Rhode Island Avenue Metro redevelopment".

The 10-acre field of grass EYA purchased from St. Paul's College is now tilled, and come the first week of September foundations will go in and construction will start moving vertically. EYA expects to deliver their first townhouse models in February or March of next year. Upon completion the whole project will bring 237 Lessard Group-designed single-family townhomes to the former campus field. The townhouses are currently being offered from $470,000 to $590,000. According to EYA, only 206 of the total will be officially "luxury townhomes" while the remaining 31 will be marketed as "affordable dwelling units." Half will go to those unit-dwellers (a.k.a. humans) earning 50% Area Median Income (AMI) and half to those earning 80% AMI.

EYA began marketing their Chancellor's Row houses in May, before they had even finished constructing their sales center. Not to be misled by the subtle art of neighborhood cartography, neighborhood watchdogs have pointed out that the "Brookland Metro" development lies a few blocks west of the unofficial "official" dividing line (9th Street NE) of Brookland, in Edgewood.

Washington D.C. Real Estate Development News

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